Saturday, July 11, 2015

Andrea Smith

Some of the posts about the Andrea Smith, is she or isn't she Cherokee issue.

My thoughts on this are currently larger than my energy level to write or type. Today was a long day, with plenty of things happening and so I'm not sure I could tackle a topic like this right now. There are ways that this brushes up against Chamorro issues, but also ways that I see this as being distinct and a facet of Native American life, the ways that they determine authenticity, the sources and forces in which it is formed.

In the shadow of the Rachel Dolezal scandal, mostly non-Cherokee
Indigenous academics have raised an alarm about Andy Smith’s identity
once again. I want to point out that it is mostly tenured faculty that
are doing this. I want to know why you have an investment in Andy’s
identity in particular. Indian identity has always been heavily
policed. Usually it was the settlers trying to undo us, but in this
case, it is ourselves. This is the part that makes me truly sick.
There isn’t a settler in sight but there is a massacre occurring. It
isn’t only Andy who is hurt and scared by this discussion. I know if my
identity was held up to a microscope or even a magnifying glass, I
would fail spectacularly. I don’t speak my language, I don’t make it
home much, I don’t eat venison because I’m a vegetarian (total
Indigenous failure!), I don’t even like camping, I haven’t had sexual
relations with an Indian in over 5 years, and I never wear turquoise
jewelry. Sure, I’m enrolled, but as an Indigenous person my identity is
always scrutinized and measured. (People often ask me for my blood
quantum or specific questions about my cultural practices.) As a Native
woman, my identity and civility are always under attack. Native men in
the academy do not have their identities and work scrutinized as much
as Native women do.

Andy Smith has done more for Indigenous people than I ever will and
this is not because I think she blocked me but I just never had the
energy she had to dedicate every waking moment to ending oppression. To
me the question or desire should not be for a self-confession from Andy
about what went wrong or what she is or is not, because I think her
actions speak louder than that. My desire is for Indigenous people to
stop tearing each other apart and to stop attacking someone who really
tried to do some good. Why didn’t so many people call out Kevin Costner
when he was adopted by the Rosebud Nation and then built a casino and
that was not about sovereignty or decolonization. I tell you, I saw
Andy go through her tenure battle at Michigan and the institution would
have never treated a white woman that way, but it most certainly would
have done so to a Native feminist.

Settlers have an interest in having less Native peoples because this
means there will theoretically be more access to Native lands with less
Native peoples. One of the most important elements of settler
colonialism is policing Native identity through blood quantum, erasure,
assimilation, and shame. Settlers have been defining the terms of our
identity since the Dawes Allotment Act of 1887 when the U.S. government
made a list of who they thought was Native and their percentage of
Indian blood. What concerns me here is that this conversation is
dominating social media newsfeeds and Native peoples are supposed to
“come out” and make a statement about whether Andy is an Indian or not.
People are demanding that Andy makes a statement, which is really, a
demand for a self-confession. Obviously, there is power in this
identity stuff and the confession of your identity and policing other
people’s racial identity. As Rey Chow argues in a much more complex and
nuanced way in The Protesting Ethnic, people of color can demand
representation and/or to be included in institutions. As Chow points
out, this does not challenge power. In fact, it solidifies power
because no demand is made to actually change the institution. You might
have noticed 50 years of having women and people of color included into
the academic industrial complex has not changed the institution much.
I see the violence, vigor, and erasure of Andy’s identity as that
moment of a challenge of representation in the academy, which does not
challenge settler colonialism or disrupt the academic industrial
complex. In fact, as Chow points out, this is what is demanded of the
“protesting ethnic”: yell, protest, and police identity, “Demand that
the power structure let you in!”

This debate does not challenge the academic industrial complex. In
fact, it is doing nothing more than reproducing and strengthening the
academy because we are just fighting amongst ourselves and it is making
some of us who are in vulnerable positions (undergraduates, graduate
students, junior faculty without tenure-track jobs with an advisor who
lots of people hate) scared to speak up and say something that actually
challenges Native studies. If this is all Native Studies can do is
police identity, and silence people in our own communities, then I no
longer want to be part of Native Studies. Andy’s identity is not a
matter of sovereignty for Native studies. For the Cherokee Nation to
decide that Andy is not a Cherokee is a matter of Cherokee sovereignty
because one of the few ways Indigenous Nations who are federally
recognized by the United States can practice our sovereignty is through
the designation of Native citizenship through setting blood quantum
requirements for our members. For us to forsake Andy for not being
Native when we have a white president of Native American and Indigenous
Studies is very hypocritical. Why let white people run Native Studies?
Does that make us less Native? I don’t think so but maybe it does. We
have real things to worry about, theorize, and love. And this debate
does not get us there. It is not a caring debate. The debate relies on
those who want to be Native informants who tell all the other
non-Natives that Andy is not Cherokee or Native like this means
something really deep. To me, it doesn’t. When I found out there
wasn’t a Santa Claus, I got over it.

This is not the most important thing happening in Native America, nor should it be.

This is NOT about Andy, but this is about usand how we deal with this shit. As Stefano Harney and Fred Moten argue in The Undercommons,
we should be trying to collect debt between us in the undercommons and
not credit. They write: “But debt is social and credit is asocial.
Debt is mutual. Credit only runs one way” (58). Credit is given to
individuals and debt is something we share together. It feels good to
owe somebody something but within capitalism, debt is considered a bad
thing that you are supposed to get rid of and gain more credit.
Capitalism and institutionalization through the academic industrial
complex relies on credit, and for “protesting ethnics” heavily depends
on racial credit. This debate with Andy creates a demand for racial
credit that is not real. The logic goes something likes this: “I am
Native because I call out Andy as not Native” and through this action I
supposedly gain racial credit and credibility as a Native person or a
non-Native person who supports decolonization. Fuck credit. Let’s get
into racial debt together. Let’s owe each other a lot and not demand
credit by calling people out as a wannabe. Sure, I may lose my
credibility over this but it has already been lost to those of you who
punish Andy by hurting me.

I am a Native woman and my blood quantum is probably higher than
yours. I chose to work with Andy. There are institutions where I won’t
even apply because I know I would not be considered because of my
association with Andy. Please see how the policing of Native identity
in the academic industrial complex does not challenge power or make it a
safer place for Native peoples or any other oppressed group.

This whole argument of comparing Andy Smith and Rachel Dolezal
displaces blackness once again in Native studies and makes it about
whiteness and not about blackness. Rachel Dolezal also claimed to be
Native too but Native studies folks use the debate over Dolezal’s
blackness to discredit Andy’s Indianness. As I stated above, and many
other scholars have done before me, blackness and Indigeneity have
radically different racializations in the United States but both
blackness and Indigeniety are perched on the what Denise Da Silva calls
the “horizon of death.” (In terms of representation, the horizon of
death, within Enlightenment thinking, people of color are not seen as
full subjects and are therefore closer to animals than human that can be
killed without impunity.)
Why is it that if one assumes Andy is not an Indian, that she
suddenly becomes white by default? We should think about this and how
Indian identity is regulated by scientific racism. Blood quantum, while
regulated by individual Native nations in the United States, is about
eliminating Native identity and moving Natives towards whiteness within
the Black and white binary. However, whiteness engulfs Indigeneity
thereby possessing Indigeneity. This is one of the ways the politics of
representation in a Black and white binary for Indigenous peoples often
means representational genocide through engulfment. Maile Arvin, by
positioning anti-blackness as a form of possession by whiteness that
undergirds settler colonialism, convincingly argues that decolonization
of Native communities will not happen without also rooting out
anti-blackness. Native scholars who compare Andy’s lack of Indianness
to Dolezal’s performance of blackness, displaces blackness by not
discussing what is actually means to compare blackness and Indigeneity
within the Black and white binary. We, in Native studies, would be
better served to try and talk about what it means that Dolezal claimed
both a Black and Native identity, but no, scholars decided to use the
media frenzy to discredit Andy and to avoid talking about anti-blackness
in Native studies. The conversation that is happening now needs to
change because this does not challenge power or decolonize Native
communities. It actually reflects back what settlers have been doing to
us for hundreds of years: dispossessing us of our identities and
setting the parameters of how we think about ourselves and our desire to
be recognized by the settlers as legitimate subjects. To me, we should
be having different conversations that could actually bring us closer
together to fight the violence of white supremacy and settler
colonialism instead of fighting with each other about who is what. As
this historical moment shows, they still want us dead and gone. We’ve
been fighting against each other for centuries and that has not worked
out so well.

Is Andy a “REAL” Indian or not? is not the question for this moment.
Right now, people of color are being murdered by the state in the
streets, prisons, and even in churches. We owe a debt to each other to
work together and stop beating each other up. We have the power to do
that by asking different questions and not putting our focus on one
person’s identity. The stakes are really high.

**************

Four Words for Andrea Smith: 'I’m Not an Indian'

By now, many of us have been confronted with the tangled ways to
think about identity shifting in light of the Rachel Dolezal affair.
Some attention has been rightfully paid to the long history of people
“playing Indian” as well, both in the world of politics and the world of
entertainment. And as Ward Churchill’s tribulations made very clear,
the academic world is not immune to those who are either intentionally
misleading others or deeply confused about their own identity. As all of
these various cases point out, identity is in fact a confusing matter,
sometimes designated by blood, other times by language, or heritage, or
cultural performances. Now a parallel case, that of Professor Andrea
Smith, has emerged from the blogosphere to hit the news, specifically
yesterday’s piece in The Daily Beast, “Meet the Native American Rachel Dolezal.”

Reading many of the blogs and news sources over the last few weeks,
both about the African American and American Indian cases of fraud, I
can’t help but notice a lingering sense that people should not ‘police’
(a truly overwrought word in academic circles) other people’s identity.
Though, to be sure, that is a particular form of individual based rights
thinking to come to the conclusion, ‘Who am I to tell another person
who they are or not?’ It doesn’t make it any easier to have these cases
situated along side the breaking news of transgendered and transsexual
benchmarks in American society, or at least in the American
celebrity-sphere.

I was both an undergraduate and graduate student in American Indian
Studies, particularly within Religious Studies at Arizona State
University. This was the 1990s and identity politics had the type of
traction leading to scholarships, financial aid, and preferential
hiring. Being both in Religious Studies and Indigenous Studies provided a
doubly difficult balancing act: in Religious Studies we struggled to be
non-believers simply studying the how people were religious.

In Indigenous Studies, we were expected to learn and help a
particular community, learning language and culture when invited to do,
essentially dance along the border of cultural insider and outsider.
Many of us were taught that scholarship offered limited practical help
to Indigenous communities, but that we could ideally do both, produce
research that helped counter the centuries of written misrepresentations
and collaborate with Native peoples in local ways. Our success in these challenging goals varies across my generation.

Where these two paths crossed were the instances when our value to
the academic world was based upon our racial, ethnic, and national
identities. Was my work with the Yoeme (Yaqui) people better, more
useful, more reliable, etc. if I was a Yoeme person? While they were
very challenging (more than words can ever convey), those years as a
graduate student were incredibly valuable for how they led me to learn
how to say something so very simple and powerful: “I’m not an Indian.”

Those words are powerful because they enable both the speaker and
listener to then determine if a path forward is of interest and of value
to everyone involved. In my case, it helped that I was beginning to
work with one the most highly Hippiefied tribes, thanks to Carlos
Castaneda. At the age of 22, I was practicing Buddhist meditation and
showed up to the Yaqui pueblos in northern Mexico uninterested in
converting or adopting their ways. I was working on my own sense of
self-less self. And while I’ve spent some time in Blessing Ways on the
Navajo reservation and NAC meetings across the Southwest, those times
were as an invited guest, not seeking to become Indian or appear more
Indian. (Okay, I did try to pull off turquoise jewelry for a few years).

Perhaps, coming from a confusing bloodline of not knowing who my
biological grandfather was, but being raised in vaguely Hispanic,
Mexican, mixed-German immigrant and Catholic cultures, and regularly
visiting reservations since childhood (as both tourist and neighbor),
you might say that I was prepared in life to find the power in saying “I
don’t necessarily know what I am.” My family has the pictures and names
of Comanche and Cherokee women who ended up in the early New Mexican
ranching family as adopted laborers, wives, or lovers. But I have no
relation to those communities, so why would I ever say I’m one of them?

I knew I wasn’t Indian because I didn’t have an indigenous community
calling me one of theirs. And I learned that it was important to many
leaders and colleagues in my academic fields if I was Indigenous, more
so than if I wasn’t. All around me I could see scholars prefer to quote,
publish, and invite Indigenous academics. Perhaps of that “missing”
grandfather, many people in native communities have said, “you look
Indian.” But I think those claims helped them justify working with me,
or were meant to compliment me. Or at least I took them that way.

I could have Indigenous blood beyond the Mexican bloodlines and the
couple of grandmothers so far back that a few “greats” wouldn’t get
there; but that’s not identity for me. I have learned much of Yoeme
language, but that doesn’t make me Yoeme in even the slightest way. I
have been taught much about Indigenous people, been taught ways of being
that have changed my life in unbelievably wonderful ways; but I’m still
a respectful guest on their land. And while I’ve spent many years,
actually decades, trying to improve Indigenous rights and vitality in
mostly academic ways (there are many fronts to this work), I’ve learned
first-hand the danger of trying to speak for Native people rather than
simply supporting their being heard. There lies the difference.

Andrea Smith surely thinks she is Cherokee; or she did at some point.
She has been asked repeatedly to either stop claiming Cherokee identity
or to either authenticate her claims through a reliable kinship,
through ties to a specific family, or through the Cherokee Nation’s
official process for enrollment. And she’s smart enough to know that in
many tribal cultures, identity is not who you claim but who claims you.
She has done incredible theoretical work in the academic field of
Indigenous Studies and has even been recognized internationally for her
broad and groundbreaking anti-violence coalition building. So does it
matter that she did all of that in Red Face?

Yes it does.

Andy Smith did not just appear out of an egg, as a fully formed
“woman of color” advocate, validated as an Indigenous scholar, and a
Nobel Peace Prize nominee. She got there by grabbing the microphone,
keeping others away from it, and deciding to speak both “as” and “for” a
group of people. While writing my ethnographic works, I do sometimes
speak “for” Yoemem; but I’ve also gone to great lengths to simply
translate and when possible, amplify Yoeme people’s claims. But, I’ve
never spoken “as” a Yoeme person.

For every scholarship she received as a Native person, for every
honorarium she has received as an Indigenous speaker, for her book sales
that a publisher sold as coming from a “Cherokee” author, those
recognitions came at the expense of some student who wasn’t funded, some
speaker who wasn’t invited, or some book by an Indigenous author that
wasn’t bought.

She spent years cultivating relationships with other powerful women
of color to ensure her insider status. And as I personally know, she
pushed others out of her way by not only playing an insider, but also
playing the gatekeeper. One only needs to visit this Tumblr page (http://andreasmithisnotcherokee.tumblr.com/)
to see her strategic use of “we” when talking about Indigenous
experiences and “them” when talking about colonizers. Andy and I both
went to a graduate program, History of Consciousness, a place that
excelled at theorizing the strategies of exactly such representations
within social movements.

Lisa Aldred wrote a great scholarly article that methodically shows
why people want to be Indian. In “Plastic Shamans and Astroturf Sun
Dances,” she demonstrated that non-Indians are unconsciously motivated
to become or affiliate as Indigenous because doing so alleviates them of
their guilt about colonization. This essay is powerful in the classroom
because it shows the sheer power of this motivation, from headdresses,
to sweat lodge tourism, to the entire market for anything smacking of
Indian spirituality.

I hesitate to give a “why” about Andrea Smith’s fraud. But I have
some inclinations based on “imperialist nostalgia” as Aldred, Renato
Rosaldo and others used that term. Having shared space with Andrea (or
“Andy”) on multiple occasions, I want to believe she was motivated most
by her desire to make the world better for Native people. Has she done a
few wrong things, then, for all the right reasons?

Well, she has secured a comfortably middle-class profession and a
position of respect. Moreover, she has gained the support, friendship,
and camaraderie of some of the most intelligent Indigenous scholars and
feminist activists I know. Were those made possible due to her claim of
Indigenous identity? If so, then we shouldn’t only be pointing fingers
at Andrea Smith. The problems lie with the standards of authenticity and
authority that rest upon something as shifty, fragile, and falsifiable
as identity.

The problem also lies with the people who believed Smith’s claim in
the face of contradictory and reliable evidence. Obviously, my pondering
all of this publicly doesn’t solve the problem. But the value of the
conversation will only emerge if we must start first with honesty.
That’s the power of saying what we know to be true.

So, to Andy (and Elizabeth Warren) and all the others out there
saying they are Indians, just say it: “I’m not Indian.” It’s okay. We’re
not so horrible that we can’t also do really great work at the same
time as being afflicted with this condition of being non-Indian.

David Shorter is Professor and Vice Chair of World Arts and
Cultures/Dance at the University of California Los Angeles. He is also
affiliated with their American Indian Studies Program and Research
Center. He has worked primarily with the Yoeme (Yaqui) people of Mexico
in his writing and filmmaking, and is most recently the creator of the
Wiki for Indigenous Languages.

“Andrea
Smith is not Cherokee. omg. this is not new information. this is what
bugs me about how Natives are treated by non-Natives in academia!!! most
Native scholars that are connected to their cultures/communities have
questioned her for a very long time. but non-Natives get so comfortable
using their one token go-to Native Feminist to quote that those
questions don’t get heard or understood.

Andrea Smith does not
rep being Cherokee unless you ask her, she usually introduces herself as
a “woman of color” or Native. she has no ties to any Cherokee
community, no record of her ancestry, and no known family that
identifies as Cherokee or acknowledges Cherokee ancestry. her work does
not take inspiration from and is not influenced by Cherokee culture or
traditions, she does not use Cherokee language ever, and she has made no
known attempt to ever learn Cherokee culture or connect with Cherokee
people. regardless of whether her blood myth is true, if you have no
interest in Cherokee culture or community, how the fuck are you
Cherokee??

her behavior has been so suspect for so long. i mean
she organized CESA in Chicago a few years ago, and not one local tribe
or Native organization attended or was featured, even though Chicago has
one of the biggest urban Indian populations in the US and she allegedly
worked with Native sexual assault victims in that city for over a
decade. how you gon do that work and not know or invite ANYONE to a
conference themed on DECOLONIZATION? and no one in the movement to end
violence against Native women, who is outside academia, knows who you
are or what you do?? i mean who is really repping her??

she
actively avoids reservations, tribal colleges, and Native people outside
academia. she does not go to cultural events, and doesn’t even really
work with other Natives. she loves to be the token Indian in “coalition
spaces.” so why is it surprising that she’s not who she says she is??

it’s
a shame honestly because she has overshadowed some really amazing
Native feminist scholars for a VERY long time. in fact tomorrow i am
going to put together a master post of Native feminist activists &
scholars that i recommend checking out, so that people who aren’t in the
loop can do some research on what is a really diverse and exciting
field.

My name is Tawna Little and I am a FULL-BLOOD – Muscogee
Creek/Seminole woman (YES, I am enrolled/CDIB carrying) from the Skunk
clan, and a daughter of the Bear clan. I was raised and still reside in
my community; i’m a ceremonial practitioner and a language
revitalizationist. My family has maintained strong ties and leadership
roles in Muscogee ceremonial, church, and political life. I hold a
degree in Native Studies from the University of Oklahoma.

I am not interested in entertaining silly online identity attacks
that seem to consume your academic careers in order to make you feel
personally more authenticated as Indigenous persons, HOWEVER, Andrea
Smith is a long time dear friend of my family and your actions are
beyond offensive and belittling to someone we deeply care about. Thus, I
wish to lend my support to Andy by speaking truth while you all
continue to act as bullies and process your own insecurities.

I want to point out that my family has long visited Cherokee
ceremonial grounds (quite regularly during some seasons) to lend support
in participation just as Cherokee ceremonial practitioners have long
done the same during our Muscogee ceremonial dances. I have never seen
any of these Andrea Smith-attackers in attendance at Cherokee
ceremonies; none of them are Cherokee speakers nor are they ceremonial
practitioners; most of these folks are of minimal blood quantum and look
white. In fact, these very kind of identity police are who traditional
ceremonial practitioners get a good laugh at.

I should also make a disclaimer here that I do not uphold
blood-quantum, tribal enrollment and phenotype as authenticating markers
of Indigenous identity; I am however very much aware that the only
factor distinguishing Andrea Smith from her attackers is a tribal
enrollment card. What else signifies these attackers as Indigenous? Who
employed them as the authority on Cherokee identity? It certainly
wasn’t the grass roots Cherokee persons with whom I fellowship. If I
felt like participating in these kinds of colonial games instead of
working to save my language from extinction and participating in my
ceremonies in order to maintain the essence of my Muscogee identity, I
would endeavor to call out all of these insecure “native” academics on
their whiteness. Why do these attackers not speak their languages? Why
weren’t they raised in traditional ceremonial ways? Why are they
living far from their communities to pursue selfish academic positions?
It’s because life is complicated! Moreover, historical realities are
often ugly. For these same reasons I even find compassion for these
hateful acting persons. Just because Andrea Smith’s ancestors did not
enroll in the Cherokee Nation during the Dawes era does not mean she
does not have the right to identify as Cherokee. It sounds as though
you all are upholding Cherokee enrollment as the ultimate standard for
Cherokee identity and the right to claim Cherokee identity. If so, that
means you uphold an individual with a blood quantum of 1/4,096 (the last
I heard it was the lowest recorded Cherokee Nation blood quantum,
meaning the last full-blood in the family was 15 generations ago), who
may have never even seen or interacted with another native person in
their life, as somehow more legitimately Indigenous than an individual
that grew up knowing she was Indigenous from oral tradition (but not
enrolled) in her family and accepted a responsibility to engage social
justice advocacy for Indigenous Peoples.

All academics have shortcomings and it amazes me that you choose to
attack Andy’s identity as her shortcoming and take it to this level.
That’s the best you could do in finding something to call her out on?
How pitiful. Why not go after her scholarship, her arguments? Oh yeah,
because they’re brilliant! And her work is used in both grass roots
organizing spaces and academic settings. Testimonies of Indigenous
female rape survivors have asserted Andy’s work to be healing and
empowering. Andrea and her sister Justine have both been
extraordinarily positive voices in my life as well as other members of
my family. This also rings true during times of hardship when their
words have been encouraging and they have been physically present in our
lives…..oh, remember that I said i’m a FULL-BLOOD (black haired-brown
skinned-Indian looking individual unlike the rest of these
insecure-in-your-identity-academic-mixed-bloods who I would not have
criticized until you decided to exercise identity policing) which means
that Andrea does hang out with Native People, contrary to previous
blogging claims that she does not hang around other Natives. Many others
can attest to that as well.

As we say in Muscogee, “mistvlke fekcahke owet fullet owes” (they are
going about in a jealous way). I guess if my academic scholarship was
lacking, I might also develop jealousy toward Andrea Smith. So,
attacking her identity on grounds of not having an enrollment card and
“misrepresenting herself” is an easy target eaten up by non-grass roots
Indigenous Peoples and is something that only mainstream whites and
insecure Natives seem to care about. It is obvious that these attackers
do not know Andrea and her personal family challenges, particularly
those surrounding her lineage. Trying to survive in academia can be
brutal in Native Studies arenas where everyone wants to be
Indianer-than-thou. I am altogether compassionate toward her
claim/misunderstanding about enrollment in the Cherokee Nation. That
doesn’t dismiss her exceptional work, commitment to social justice and
desire to end global oppression. Andrea does not claim to be a Cherokee
cultural or language expert and these attackers evidently have fooled
folks into thinking they are somehow culturally and linguistically
superior to Andy in their Native identity. Wow, that’s a joke! Andrea
has not used her Cherokee identity as a way to promote herself; rather,
she identifies with what she was told her identity is growing up and she
participates in social justice advocacy- for people other than herself.
In fact, she went to law school to defend those who cannot defend
themselves. Andrea has made INCREDIBLE personal sacrifices for her
family and herself in order to fight for justice, and anyone that
attempts to discredit her clearly does not get the whole picture. The
virtues of my Muscogee People (vnokeckv, eyasketv, mehenwv, kvncvpkv) do
not support this kind of hateful behavior. It sounds like most of
these attackers are without traditional teachings from their respective
nations; they have yet to learn how to live on this earth.

*****************

On the Politics of Distraction

https://tequilasovereign.wordpress.com/

July 2, 2015

“The accusation that indigenous feminists are engaged
in a violent politics of disposability is remarkable (and ridiculous),
since it seems the ones who are rendered disposable in just that
accusation are –wait for it, wait for it!– indigenous feminists.” ~ Mimi Thi Nguyen (responding to this.)

@tequilasovereign: It’s not about blood
quantum. It’s not about blood quantum. It’s not about blood quantum.
It’s not about blood quantum.

So very many comments swirling, whirling around social media and news
sites about Andrea Smith. So very many comments that distract us from
the core issue. Here are a few of my own responses to the makers of
distraction.

The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma (CNO), Cherokee
representatives and employees, and Cherokee citizens have known about
Andrea Smith’s false claims to enrollment status and lineal descent
since the early 1990s. They have been the most generous, the
most empathetic, the most kind in their responses to her. They have
confronted her privately, when made they have kept their agreements not
to keep harping on her publicly, they have left her alone even when she
hasn’t honored her agreements with them to stop identifying as an
enrolled citizen. They even, to my understanding, counseled her that she
could identify herself as “Cherokee by descent” if she had Cherokee
relations and simply couldn’t satisfy enrollment/citizenship criteria in
the CNO. This includes Richard Allen, Patti Jo King, David Cornsilk,
and Steve Russell, but also many, many others.

The “bottom line” is that Andrea Smith presented the genealogical
records she had to a Cherokee genealogist she hired at two different
times–when she was trying to establish proof of a matrilineal claim in
1993 and when she was trying to establish proof of a patrilineal claim
in 1999 (or thereabouts). Both attempts failed to pan out in
establishing Cherokee descent. They both panned out in establishing her
Euro-American descent. (In other words, there wasn’t an absence of
genealogical records.)

Smith was, herself, so convinced of the validity of the
results–accepting of the conclusions–that she stated to people that she
had no legitimate lineal descent claim (in 1993, 1999, 2007, 2008) and
that she would stop falsely claiming she was an enrolled Cherokee (in
2007 and 2008).

I find it troubled and troubling that people equate the
politics of racial authenticity with the expectation of integrity and
ethics in how someone identifies themselves in their work.
Forgive the bluntness but I could give a fuck (maybe even more) about
whether or not Andrea Smith is enrolled or what her blood quantum is,
nor do I care whether or not she conforms to stereotypical, phenotypical
expectations of physical appearance (skin, hair, eye color etc.). I
don’t care if she has thousands of years of documented affiliation or
whether or not she looks Indian to non-Indians.
When I published an article in 2003 on the Indian Arts and Crafts Act
of 1990, I got into trouble with some Native scholars, artists, and
community members (including Cherokee) for arguing that it–like so many
other federal, state, and tribal laws–relies on official enrollment
status in a federally recognized tribe in order to allow someone to
represent their work as “Indian made.” As I also argue in other
publications, federal recognition and even tribal enrollment criteria
often rely on and so perpetuate racialized notions of identity and
cultural authenticity through blood quantum criteria. These criteria are
embedded historically in the administration of the General Allotment
Act of 1887 and the dispossession of Native peoples from their
territories. We need other ways of reckoning Native legal status and
rights.

Many Native people disagree with me. Many Cherokee and other
southeastern people whose tribes were removed into Indian Territory
(Oklahoma) argued that they produced their own documentation during
allotment and have better genealogical records than just about anyone
else in the United States (excepting, perhaps, the Mormons). I feel
conflicted about these claims when I think with the historical work of
Angie Debo and Theda Perdue. But I also know that the CNO and other
tribes in Oklahoma have fairly damn good genealogies that do not rely on
the documents of federal, state, or church institutions.

To stay on point, the CNO, unlike most other tribes in the United States, does not
require a particular blood quantum in order to be enrolled or a
citizen. They do require that you are able to demonstrate lineal
descent, in whatever degree or way that may come. The CNO has taken (and
again, please excuse the bluntness) a lot of shit for that criteria.
They have born the brunt of SCOTUS decisions (Adoptive Couple v. Baby
Girl, 2013) and social media mockery for “letting anyone” into their
tribe–even someone with “3/256th” blood degree (to quote SCOTUS).

And then, of course, there are the problems the CNO have had with
respecting their own treaties with regards to the legal status and
rights of Cherokee Freedmen (Black-Indians).

My point is that expecting Andrea Smith–or anyone else–to be honest,
to have integrity, in how they identify themselves and their work is not
the same thing as policing their/her identity through the standards of
racial authenticity. No one I know has ever asked her what her racial
quota is or whether or not she can produce her CDIB.

Equating “identity policing” with the expectation of
integrity with how someone presents themselves as Native is part of the
trouble–anticipating that kind of racialized equivalence is exactly why
Cherokee people and Native scholars who have known about Smith’s fraud
for 7 to 24 years have never come forward.

And this might be where the comparison of Rachel Dolezal and Andrea
Smith both helps and doesn’t help non-Natives understand the issues. I’m
still trying to think this through but in watching how dynamically
people have misunderstood the comparison, I have come to believe that
Dolezal’s “racial shifting” is perhaps not the best way to help
non-Natives understand Smith’s fraud. I am rethinking this comparison in
relation the work of Native scholars like David Wilkins and Heidi
Stark. They demonstrate that Native/Indigenous is a legal
category indicating a certain status and set of rights under
international and extraconstitutional law. Native/Indigenous is not
a race/ethnicity or minority status. (See David E. Wilkins and Heidi
Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark. American Indian Politics and the American Political System. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010.)

Perhaps Dolezal’s race shifting illuminates Smith’s fraud only in the
sense that Dolezal and Smith have laid claim on a social experience of
racialized oppression that they do not have. For Dolezal’s blackface
this was enacted through the alteration of her personal appearance and
social behavior. For Smith’s redface it was enacted through a legal
claim on status and rights in the Cherokee Nation. But much more
informed, thoughtful work through these issues are needed. Beginning
with the understanding that expecting people to be honest about how they
identify is not the same thing as asking people to conform to racist
notions of authenticity.

If an anti-racist feminist politics is not grounded in integrity and ethics, what is it good for?
If someone’s scholarship and political work is based on a fraudulent
misrepresentation not only of who they are but what they have
experienced based on who they are, then what happens to anti-racist
feminist theoretical interventions and political organizing? How does
the fraud work itself in and through the practice of confronting racist,
sexist ideologies and the insidious way those ideologies structure
state, social, and interpersonal forms of oppression and violence?

The difficult history not being talked about yet is how fraudulent
claims to Cherokee citizenship, enrollment, and identity have worked in
concert with federal and state efforts to undermine and
dispossess Cherokee governance and territorial rights. The fraud, in
other words, doesn’t operate in an historical vacuum. It didn’t just
appear in the 1990s or “get outed” in 2015. It has a complicated,
largely erased history of establishing and protecting state claims on
Native governments, lands, and bodies. That is why, all throughout these
conversations, the integrity and ethics of how one defines and
represents oneself as Native is so deeply important and so deeply
feminist in relation to one’s political practice.

4. All I know is this. Andrea Smith and I went to
graduate school at UCSC at the same time (me 1992-2000 and her
1997-2002). Smith told me then that it was her father who was Cherokee, a
descendant of Redbird Smith, and some difficult stories about her
mother which I won’t divulge here. Actually I learned very quickly not
to ask her too many personal questions.

It wasn’t until 2007-2008 that I heard Smith was telling other people
during her time at UCSC and then within the Native American and
Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) and CNO that it was her mother
and her mother’s parents who were enrolled Cherokee. She was also
telling people that she was enrolled. I was confused and assumed that I
had misremembered what she told me.
After Steve Russell’s ICT editorials in March/April 2008, a group of
about a dozen Native feminist scholars involved in a contracted book
project with Smith (who was a co-editor) attempted to talk to
Smith about Russell’s editorials. Smith had already told the other
co-editor of the book that she had no lineal descent claim. When we all
got on the conference call together, Smith refused to talk with the rest
of us about it. She got on the call, bursted into tears, said “I can’t
do this,” and hung up.
I can’t even begin to tell you how difficult and painful and vexing
this has been for us as scholars and friends. We have worried and
disagreed and struggled with one another over what the right and
honorable thing to do is. There has been nothing easy about it. Nothing.

I share this because in the blogosphere of reactions to what seems
like new information about Smith for a lot of people, people are
speaking as if those of us who have known, who have tried to think out
loud about the issues in the last few days and weeks, are spiteful and
mean-spirited and hateful people. That has not been my experience. The
Native feminists and NAIS allies, UCSC alum and others, who have known
and who are just beginning to speak up about the issues are
compassionate, generous, empathetic, and smart and have been genuinely
distressed about Smith–and for Smith’s health and well-being–and what
the right thing is to do and to say for years and years and years. It
has required a lot of spiritual, emotional, professional, and
intellectual energy to work through. And we are only just beginning.

My challenge to everyone is to stay focused. There
are too many distractions in conversations about these issues–too many
accusations of papergenocide, lateral violence, cruelty. They have
seemed, to me, disingenuous. A way to refocus the question and alleviate
Smith of any kind of responsibility or accountability.

My favorite of these distractions so far has been accusations of me
and others who have spoken up of being members of COINTELPRO or
secret FBI-agents out to destroy a revolutionary (and you know who you
are). I really have nothing to say other than “good one.” You’ve made
me/us really important if somewhat inept for outing ourselves so easily.

The politics of racial shifting in anti-racist feminist organizing
has been made anew in recent debates over the cases of Rachel Dolezal
(formerly known as Black) and Andrea Smith (formerly known as Cherokee).

I want to think—out loud— through these cases together and the
incredibly different ways that people have responded to them. For
myself, I am trying to understand the differences in the cultural and
social expectations and claims on Blackness and Indigeneity that they
mark and how those expectations and claims operate so differently within
and for Black and Native communities. I have more questions than
answers.

Dolezal Today

Dolezal’s parents, Ruthanne and Lawrence (Larry), reveal to local
journalists and NBC news anchors that their daughter, Rachel, has been
lying about her ancestry (see reports from June 15, June 16, and June 17).
On June 15, under pressure from the NAACP, Rachel Dolezal resigns as
President of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP, and subsequently loses
her faculty position in the Africana Education program at Eastern
Washington University. According to some reports, linked above, she is
being investigated by the City of Spokane’s Ethics Commission for ethics
violations in misrepresenting herself as Black on an application to
serve on the City’s Police Oversight Board.
In a June 16 interview with Matt Lauer on the Today Show, Dolezal attempted to counter her parent’s statements by asserting her right of “self-identification.”

“Dolezal: Well, first of all, I really don’t see why
they’re [her parents] in such a rush to whitewash some of the work that I
have done, and who I am, and how I’ve identified, and this goes back to
a very early age, with my self-identification with the black experience
as a very young child. Lauer: When did it start? Dolezal: I would say
about 5 years old. Lauer: You began identifying yourself as
African-American? Dolezal: I was drawing self-portraits with the brown
crayon instead of the peach crayon and black, curly, hair, you know,
yeah. That was how I was portraying myself. Lauer: So it started way
back then. Rachel, when did you start—and I’ll use the word, you can
correct me if you don’t like it—when did you start deceiving people and
telling them you were black when you knew their questions were pointed
in a different direction? When someone said to you, back then, “Are you
black or white?” and you’d say “I’m black,” you wouldn’t say, “I
identify as black,” you’d say, “I’m black.” When did you start deceiving
people? Dolezal: Well, I do take exception to that, because it’s a
little more complex than me identifying as black or answering a question
of “Are you black or white?” I was actually identified when I was doing
human rights work in north Idaho as, first, trans-racial, and then when
some of the opposition to some of the human rights work I was doing
came forward, the next day’s newspaper article identified me as being a
biracial woman, and then the next article when there were actually
burglaries, nooses, etcetera, was, this is happening to a black woman.
And I never corrected— Lauer: Well, why didn’t you correct it if you
knew it wasn’t true? Dolezal: Because it’s more complex than, you know,
being true or false in that particular instance. [After questions about
the ways she has changed her appearance.] Dolezal: Absolutely.
Absolutely. I have a huge issue with blackface. This is not some freak,
Birth of a Nation mockery blackface performance. This is on a very real
connected level, how I’ve actually had to go there with the experience,
not just the visible representation, but with the experience, and the
point at which that really solidified was when I got full custody of
Izaiah. And he said, “you’re my real mom,” and he’s in high school, and
for that to be something that is plausible, I certainly can’t be seen as
white and be Izaiah’s mom. [After questions about misrepresenting her
father as a Black man.] Dolezal: Albert Wilkerson is my dad. Every man
can be a father, not every man can be a dad. Lauer: Your lawsuit in 2002
against Howard University, where you claim you were discriminated
against because you were a pregnant white woman. Do you understand how
people could hear that and say, “Here’s another example—she says she
identified herself as being African-American or black from a young age,
but here’s a case where she identified herself as a white woman because
it worked for her under the circumstances.” Dolezal: The reasons for my
full-tuition scholarship being removed and my teaching position as well,
my TA position, were that other people needed opportunities and you
probably have white relatives that can afford to help you with your
tuition. And I thought that was an injustice. … Dolezal: Well, as much
as this discussion has somewhat been at my expense, recently, in a very
sort of viciously inhumane way—come out of the woodwork, and—the
discussion’s really about what it is to be human, and I hope that that
can drive at the core of definitions of race, ethnicity, culture,
self-determination, personal agency, and ultimately empowerment. . . .
Dolezal: I actually was talking to one of my sons yesterday and he said,
“Mom, racially you’re human and culturally you’re black.” And, you
know, so we’ve had these conversations over the years, I do know that
they support the way that I identify, and they support me. Ultimately,
we have each other’s back. We’re the Three Musketeers.”

Criticisms, however, of Dolezal had flooded social media, news, and
community forums, accusing her of blackface, opportunism, appropriation,
and privilege. Dolezal responded to these criticisms by claiming to be
“transracial” (also of Native American descent—growing up in a tipi,
hunting with a bow and arrow), identifying as a bisexual, claiming to
have been sexually abused by her brother, and claiming to have been
raised in a too-strict Christian home. In the end, none of these claims
dissuaded her critics and only enraged them further with calls of
accountability. Dolezal was forced to resign on June 15 from her
position at the NAACP and from her faculty position at EWU.

Smith Tumble

About two weeks ago, Annita Lucchesi (Southern Cheyenne) posted a comment on her tumblr page entitled “Andrea Smith is not Cherokee.” In Lucchesi’s biography for an article she wrote for Last Real Indiansin
honor of Loretta Saunders, it says, “Annita Lucchesi is a Southern
Cheyenne survivor of sexual and domestic violence. She is a graduate
student in the Critical Culture, Gender, & Race Studies department
at Washington State University, and also works at the National
Indigenous Women’s Resource Center, which is dedicated to reclaiming the
sovereignty of Native nations and safeguarding Native women and their
children.” Her comment on tumblr about Smith begins:

“Andrea Smith is not Cherokee. omg. this is not new
information. this is what bugs me about how Natives are treated by
non-Natives in academia!!! most Native scholars that are connected to
their cultures/communities have questioned her for a very long time. but
non-Natives get so comfortable using their one token go-to Native
Feminist to quote that those questions don’t get heard or understood.”

For
clarification: This is not an image I created. It circulated on twitter
a couple of weeks ago, after the one comparing Elizabeth Warren with
Rachel Dolezal was posted, and after Lucchesi’s comments.

A day later, Lucchesi posted a comment entitled “cool indigenous feminist scholars to check out.”
Both of her comments generated close to 6,000 replies, including likes,
reposts, and remarks. The overwhelming majority of the respondents
express some form of shock, dismay, pain, and outrage over the news
about Smith and gratitude for the recommended reading list.

As Lucchesi’s comments were circulated on twitter and Facebook by
Native and non-Native academics, activists, and community members, they
provoked a diverse intensity of responses, including criticisms of those
who did the circulating as witch-hunters, mean-spirited, lacking logic,
not knowing what they were talking about, and the like.

Within a few days, a new tumblr page appeared: andreasmithisnotcherokee.
With multiple Cherokee and other sources and primary and secondary
documentation dating back to 1991, the page tracks a 24-year history of
Smith misrepresenting herself as an enrolled Cherokee citizen, of being
confronted on the validity of her claims and agreeing with the Cherokee
Nation to no longer publicly identify as Cherokee, and of subsequently
allowing others to misrepresent her as a Cherokee intellectual and
activist.

Smith’s admissions to multiple Cherokee people in 1993, 2007, and
2008 that she has no lineal descent claims as a Cherokee is as striking
as the fact, as noted on tumblr, that, “To date, no member of the
Redbirth Smith family or any other Cherokee family has acknowledged
Andrea Smith’s claims of descent/belonging.”

In the two weeks since Lucchesi’s posts, the twitter and Facebook flurry, and the appearance of andreasmithisnotcherokee,
not a single national media outlet or professional institution or
association to which Smith is a member has remarked on Smith’s case. And
neither has Smith responded–to refute, to acknowledge, to apologize. In
fact, it appears that all she has done in response is to close her
twitter account (@andrea366, though one she seems to be affiliated with
@NativeChristian remains active) and her Facebook account (Andy Smith).

In my albeit limited worlds of social media–wordpress, twitter,
Facebook–I have watched as many Natives and non-Natives in and outside
of the academy have posed questions about the timing and motivations of
the tumblr posts/pages. These questions have oftentimes assumed that it
has been common knowledge, certainly within Native studies since 2008,
that Smith is a fraud, so why bring it all up (again) now?

Instead of assuming that “everybody knew/knows,” particularly within
Native studies since 2008, which is clearly not the case given the
responses to the tumblr posts and circulation mentioned above, a more
productive place to begin might be to ask why there has not been any
noticeable difference in professional or
political expectations of Smith—in her self-presentations, speaking
engagements, professional service, and publications? There are certainly
many people who knew/know, so why have her ethics and integrity not
been questioned or challenged in the same or similar way to those of
Dolezal? Why does Smith’s fraud get excused on the grounds of “her good
work” but Dolezal does not?

Obviously I am not suggesting that Dolezal and Smith have the same
kind or volume of professional publications or that they do the same
kind of political work.

But it seems to me that the ethical issues swirling around Smith are
so viscous and thick for Native and non-Native academics (and) activists
(especially those aligned as anti-racist feminists) that it is
impossible to wade through them without taking any kind of action
whatsoever. Like trying to stand nonchalantly in quick sand or to sit
comfortably in a pot of water as it comes to a boil.

Moving, Forward

If the past 24 years are any indication of the future, I fear what will happen in regards Smith is this:

non-Native academics (and) activists will eventually dismiss the
sources and documentation of Smith’s fraud as crass or too-complicated
identity politics, something that they can’t possibly understand or take
a position on, as the advancement of oppressively racial state
normativities, or as an example of problems unique to Native people that
Natives have to sort out for themselves.

Native academics (and) activists will turn on one another, will go
mute, or will ignore the information (again) in the name of not
advancing racism, not doing harm to Smith, or showing respect for her
“good work” in “the community.”

Meanwhile, we’ll all fail to ask why, as Dolezal and Smith present
themselves through such complicated personal stories of childhood abuse
and family dysfunction, we respond so differently to Dolezal’s blackface
and Smith’s redface. We’ll avoid the opportunity to think out loud
together about why it seems the entire nation demands accountability of
someone pretending to be Black–of literally altering her physical
appearance to conform to racist expectations of Blackness–but doesn’t
seem to give one iota of concern about those who pretend to be Indian.

Is this because, at the end and beginning and middle of
Smith’s fraud, “we” would all like to claim or have already claimed to
have been raised in tipis, hunting for our food, feeling Indian since we
were kids, shifting out of ourselves into the Indian’s pains and
successes? Is it that “we” all, secretly, want to be Indian like her? Or
perhaps that “we” all, secretly, already claim to be Indian ourselves?

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This blog is dedicated to Chamorro issues, the use and revitalization of the Chamoru language and the decolonization of Guam. This blog also aims to inform people around the world about the history, culture and language and struggles of the Chamorro people, who are the indigenous islanders of Guam, Saipan, Tinian, Luta and Pagan in the Mariana Islands. Pues Haggannaihon ha', ya taitai na'ya, ya Si Yu'us Ma'ase para i finatto-mu.

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The Revolution Will Not Be Haolified

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE HAOLIFIEDTinige’ as Guahu - 2003 (updated 2008)

You will not be able to ignore it che’lu * This time you will not be able to blame it all on Anghet * You will not be able to change channels * And watch Fear Factor, Rev TV of Salamat Po Guam because * The Revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be televised, nor will it be advertised * It will not be sponsored by the Good Guys at Moylan’s or the better guys at AK. * It will not be something easily explained by radio callers * Whether they be Positively Local, Definitively Settler, or Surprisingly Coconut * It will not be cornered by the Calvos and explained by Sabrina Salas * Matanane * After the story about the incoming B-52’s or 1000’s of Marines careening towards to Guam, and how we * should be economically energized and not terrorized. * Jon Anderson will have no TT anecdotes about it * and Chris Barnett won’t malafunkshun it because the revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be televised or editorialized * It will not be something canabilized with two inches here two inches there * Dubious headlines everywhere * Lee Weber will not edit it * Joe Murphy will not put it in his pipe and smoke it * Nor dream about it, or tell others the wonders and blunders of it. * There will be no letters to the editor quoting scriptures or denying its constitutionality * And there will be no American flag inserts saying these three colors just don’t run * As the revolution will not be editorialized

The revolution will not be televised or politicized * It will not play the same old gayu games * And promise you that same old talonan things. * The revolution will not wave at you as you drive by on Marine Drive * And seduce you with its hardworking eyes. * It will not be territorial or popular, and not encourage you with maolek blue. * The revolution will not put marang salaman po after its speeches to get more Filipino votes in the next election because the revolution will not be politicized

The revolution will not be televised, not be theorized * It will not be something GCC or UOG friendly. * There will be no books at Bestseller offering to help you lose something in 90 days * Or Rachel Ray helping you cook the revolution of your way. * Ron McNinch will not survey it * and will not poll people about their revolution of choice. * There will be no WASC review report demanding accountability demanding autonomy * And no beachcombing carpetbaggers will proclaim their own terminal authority * Over the histories, the laws, the thinking of those for whom they see nothing but corrupt and corrupting inferiority * The revolution will not be colonized

The revolution will not be televised, not be supersized. * The revolution will not be something you can buy at Ross, or get at blue light cost * It is not just red rice, kelaguan uhang, or popcorn with Tobacco sauce. * It doesn’t come with Coke and it doesn’t fit on a fiesta plate. * The revolution will not make you gof sinexy, cure your jafjaf, or make fragrant your fa’fa’ * The revolution will not force you to be where America’s empire begins * Or where Japan’s golf courses and Gerry Yingling’s credit card debt ends. * You won’t need a credit card, or be charged for the tin foil to cover your balutan * As the revolution will not be economized

The revolution will not be televised, blownback or militarized * There will be no more physical ordnance buried in people’s lands * And no more patrionizing propaganda buried in people’s minds * The revolution will not get you cheaper cases of chicken or increased commissary privileges. * It will not make freedomless flags feel more comfortable in your hands * Or make uniforms fit more snugly around your mind. * The revolution will not deny racism or exploitation * And not create histories about landfalls of destiny * But instead publicize the racism and evils of American hegemony. * The revolution will not be subsidized by construction contracts or the race of Senator Inouye or Congressman Burton * It will not be laid waste to by daisy cut budgets or Medicare spending limits * Instead it will be sustained by deep memories that refuse to die * The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised and will not polarize based on blood or color * It will not make your skin lighter * It will not make your skin darker * It will not test your blood the way Hitler or Uncle Sam would of done * It will not hate some and love others based on their time of naturalization * Or incept date of their compacts of free association. * But the revolution will help some find comfort, find strength, find power * In their connections to the land and to each other * Allow some to discover the sovereignty that can be found in solidarity * The revolution will take and remake this consciousness that doesn’t need to be televised * But does need to be revolutionized * The revolution will not be haolified * The revolution will not be haolified